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Magnolia isn't exactly what you would call "a Jewish neighborhood." My wife Rise` is very solidly Jewish. I'm Catholic, but a little bit Jewish by blood, by a great great great grandfather Jacob WOELFLE, and a great great great great great grandfather Abraham BAEHR. At any rate, when we moved to Magnolia, at least on our account Magnolia became a "Jewish town."
More's the better.
I was always proud of Rise`'s Judaism. Her 2 daughters by her first husband, who was a not-very-devout Protestant, and our 3 boys Josh, Reid and Jeremy, functionally each have 1 foot in the Old Testament and 1 foot in the New Testament.
And I was really proud of the Catholic Church when, in opposition to 1700 years of Christian anti-Semitism, John Paul II signed-off on 2 documents expressly declaring that Judaism -- functionally, God's Old Testament Church and the Old Covenant -- continues to be a valid conduit to salvation, because God never revokes a covenant, or promise.
And the Judaism in my family continues to be a source of solace to me, as the Catholic Church continues to shut down its churches, paid-for by the Catholic faithful, and sell them off and pay off lawsuits for self-destructive mostly homosexual-style sexual misbehavior by priests of the past.
At any rate, the history of the Jews of Eastern Europe escaping to America in the face of terrifying Russian and East and West European pogroms is fascinating. Here, for my family and for all other interested parties, is one such history, recently compiled with the help of records in the wonderful Ancestry.com system. Read it! Even if you're not Jewish, it's good for you, like matzo ball soup! ...
CHIA MENA
BIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION
Before and
after I joined
the SOBEL family
by marrying my
wife Rise` SOBEL
in 1982, I
heard the name
“Chia Mena,” “Chia
Mena,” “Chia Mena”
dropped at family
gatherings, but that
is all I ever heard.
It seemed to
me that the
name was beginning
to have almost
mystical significance in the family,
like, “Chia Mena”
is THE Jewish
matriarch in the
family, “the Jewish
superwoman who is
the beginning of
it all” here
in the United
States for our
wonderful Jewish extended
family.
Not only
did no one in the
family ever actually
say anything about Chia
Mena, but no one seemed
to know anything
definite. All one
ever heard in
the family was
“Chia Mena,” “Chia
Mena,” “Chia Mena,”
right?
Worse, I
spent years looking
for a document
with her name
on it, but
in vain. Nothing,
anywhere.
Rise`’s Aunt
Sylvia said, “She
was from Russia.
She was married
to William Lescovitch.
She came over
around 1900. Her
maiden name was
an ‘R’ name
like ‘Rachman’ or
something like that.”
That was it.
Well, yesterday,
December 9, 2015,
when I was
researching Chia Mena’s
daughter, Rise`’s grandmother
Rose Leschner, I
did it. I
bumped into the “Chia
Mena mother lode,”
when I played-around
with the spelling
of “Leschner,” as
follows.
Rise` Sobel
my wife is
the daughter of father Rubin
Sobel who is
the son of grandmother Rose
Leschner who is
the daughter of great grandfather
William Lescovitch and great grandmother
Chia Mena.
As I
was touring Ancestry.com, looking
for ancestors on my side
of the family,
I came upon
a “Leschner” whose
father spelled the
family surname “Lesnar.”
I thought, “That’s
interesting. Is that
how Rise`’s grandmother
originally spelled ‘Leschner’?”
So, I
did a name
search for “Rose
Lesnar” in Ancestry.com
general document access
file, and, bingo,
there it was
-- the 1910 Census form
bearing the information
of Chia Mena
and of her
children.
And a
further search of
Chia Mena’s name
as it is
rendered in the
1910 Census turned-up
something amazing --
the location of
Chia Mena’s gravestone,
as well as
a photograph of it.
I am
a Catholic --
in my eyes,
a “New Testament
Jew.” I believe
in an afterlife.
I believe in
the value of
prayers for the
soul of a
deceased person. I
also believe in
the value of
comprehending one’s roots
-- in being
aware of our
ancestry and their
stories. It makes
the one with
that awareness something
more than a
faceless, nameless, culture-driven “child
of the age.”
It makes the
one with that
awareness a “person,”
a descendant who
is the beneficiary
of the work,
joy, and terrible
suffering of our
ancestors.
So, after
reading this, go to Chia
Mena’s grave, say
a prayer for
her soul, and
leave a prayer
rock on her
inscribed footstone.
CHIA MENA’S
STORY
The first
thing to understand
about Chia Mena
is that neither
“Chia” nor “Mena”
were actually part
of her formal
name. We don’t
have her maiden
surname. Her given
name was spelled
“Manee” in the
1910 Census form
-- pronounced MAH-nay? -- probably at
the request of one of
her children, since
Chia is listed
as being illiterate
in 1910. “Chia”
appears to have
been her Yiddish
nickname, which, of
course, is the
female articulation of
the male gender
Hebrew word chayyim meaning
“life.” “Mena” appears
to have been the American
corruption of “Manee,”
achieved by interchanging
the vowel sounds
for the sake
of elision: MEN-nah is
easier to “slide
over” than MAH-nay for
the Western tongue.
So, “Chia Mena”
is not Rise`’s
great grandmother’s real
name at all
-- “Chia Mena”
is a NICKNAME / CORRUPTED GIVEN
NAME combination, completely
omitting any surname.
It would be
as though I
called Rise`, to
whom I gave
the nickname “Littlest,”
“Hey ! Littlest Re`si !” ["RUH-see," instead of "REE-suh"].
Again, Rise`’s
Aunt Sylvia --
her father Rubin’s
sister -- told
me, “I believe
- but I’m
not sure --
that Chia Mena’s
maiden name in
Russia was an
‘R’ name -- ‘Rachman’ or
something like that.”
However, I
happened-into something that
may be an
alternate explanation for
where “Rachman” could
have come from.
Rise`’s grandmother
Rose LESCHNER – SOBEL died
in 1929. In
the rectangle on
her death certificate
reciting “Mother’s Maiden
Name,” the work “Unknown”
is inscribed. But
the “Un” in
“Unknown” is badly
scrawled, and the
“k” in “Unknown”
is rendered “R.” The
longhand “n” looks
like a “u.”
As a result,
the Ancestry.com transcriber
transcribed “Unknown” on
the death certificate
to read “Ruoun.”
Did Aunt Sylvia
make the same
error, and then,
50 years later,
render her vague
memory of the
“Ruoun” error as
“’Rachman’ or something
like that”? Hmmmm.
The bottom
line is that,
given everything --
the fact of
the chaos of
anti-Semitic society in
Moldova, and of
leaving Moldova for
America; the fact
that Rose Leschner’s
own family did
not know Rose’s
own mother’s maiden
name in 1929;
the fact of Ancestry.com transcriber’s
error; and and
the fact of even Aunt
Sylvia’s uncertainty --
Chia Mena’s maiden
name is so
fluid and uncertain
that it is
wrong to preserve
in writing a
family surname as
though we knew
one.
As a
consequence, I am
tossing “Rachman” and
substituting-in her married
name -- the
only surname we see her
using -- in
the way she
rendered “Lescovitch” in
speech and in
the way her children spelled
it, “Lesnar.” (Rise`
had an interesting
follow-up comment: “Lesnar”
may have been
the way the
LESNAR family Americanized
“Lescovitch” because “Lesnar”
was also Chia
Mena’s maiden name, if it
was, where, as
frequently happened in the shtetls
of the Pale,
cousins were forced
to marry cousins
because of legal restrictions upon
Jews on movement
within the Pale. I.e., Jews weren't allowed to travel to another shtetl to find a spouse.)
And so,
her name in
the 1910 Census
is “Manee Lesnar,”
and here is
the photo of
the 1918 footstone
on her grave,
in Har Jehuda
Cemetery in Upper
Darby, Pennsylvania, featuring
her NICKNAME / CORRUPTED GIVEN
NAME combination plus
the Americanized version
of her married
name, re-corrupted to
LESCHNER by her
daughter, Rise`’s grandmother Rose LESCHNER – SOBEL …
So, there
you have it.
For the first
time “Chia Mena” is
more than just
a name dropped
at family gatherings.
She is no
longer a “mystical
matriarch.” She is
a person who
lived and died,
and now has
a humble footstone
memorializing her existence.
Re Chia
Mena’s married surname
LESNAR / LESCOVITCH …
Aunt Sylvia
and the Cousin’s
Club Family Tree
both agreed that
Chia Mena’s husband’s
name was “William
Lescovitch.”
The “-vitch”
suffix on “Lescovitch”
is the most
important part of
the name of
Rise`’s great grandfather
William Lescovitch. There
are principally two
places in the
world where we
see the “-vitch”
surname suffix, meaning
“son of –,” namely
Moldova -- formerly referred to as "Bessarabia" by the Czarist government of Russian when it was part of the Russian Pale of Settlement -- and the
United States.
Moldova/Bessarabia was
in the southernmost part of the Pale of Settlement
for the Jews
of Russia beginning
in the 19th century,
and the United
States was where
the Jews of
Moldova went when
the Gentiles of
Moldova began to
riot and kill
the Jews of
Moldova in pogroms.
The best
guess for the
“Lesco –“ portion of
“Lescovitch” among genealogical
etymologists seems to
be that “Lesco”
is derived from
“Leshco” which essentially
means “a man
of Lesh,” a
section of Saxony,
Germany, from which
some of the
Jews of the
Russian Pale came.
“Lesh,” meaning something
like “The Tenancy”
or “The Leased
Area,” would have
been the German
euphemism referring to
“the tenancy where
we let the
Jews live.”
Every time,
if it’s about
the Jews, it’s
about persecution of
the Jews, isn’t
it? It reminds
one of the jokes about Old World anti-Semitism:
ON RUSSIAN ANTI-SEMITISM: Hirschel and Zemel decided to explore the Gentile neighborhoods beyond their shtetl when they came to the local Russian Orthodox church. "What goes on in such places?," asks Zemel. "I don't know!," Hirschel answers with fear in his eyes, "Maybe we should go back!" "Nooooooooo," answers Zemel, "I'll tell you what -- I will go in and tell them that I want to be a Christian, and see what happens!"
So, Zemel opens the door of the church, disappears within, and all is quiet.
Finally, after about 15 minutes, Zemel comes out. His payot or sidelocks have been trimmed to sideburns, and he carries a 1500 page Russian language Christian Bible.
"Zemel!" says Hirschel, "I was so worried! You were gone for 15 minutes. What happened in there? Did they teach you to be a Christian???!!!"
"They taught me what they said I need to know about being a Christian!," Zemel answers, "What business of it is yours, anyway, you damn Jew!"
ON "THE THEME OF ALL JEWISH HOLIDAYS: “The
theme of all
Jewish holidays”: “They
wanted to kill
us; we fought them;
we won; let’s
eat.”
At any rate, William
Lescovitch was probably
a Moldovan in
the southern portion
of the Russian
Pale of Settlement
whose parents or
grandparents were Jews
from Lesh, Saxony
who emigrated or
were forced to
emigrate to Moldova.
I say “parents
or grandparents” because
of his given
name, “William.” How
could a name
like “William” have occurred in
the shtetls of
Moldova, for heaven’s
sake? Simple: His
family’s emigration from
Saxony, Germany had
been so recent,
and their Germanic
acculturation was so
great, that they
gave him the
name “Wilhelm” --
rendered “William” by
his American descendants
-- at birth.
It seems so likely,
I’m going to
adopt that rendition
as a safe
educated guess.
That all
falls together pretty
well, and should
be accepted by
the family as
“the best educated
guess” at this
point.
And
here, now, is
Chia Mena’s story,
as best as we can
reconstruct it from
larger historical facts,
and from the
1910 Census form,
which has a
very large amount
of useful material
in it.
The 1910
Census says that
both of Chia Mana’s parents
were Yiddish-speaking Jews
born in Russia.
If whoever gave
Chia Mena’s age
as “75” on
her gravestone was
right, she was born in the Pale,
probably in Moldova
in the extreme
south, in 1843,
during the reign
of Czar Alexander
II. Her parents
gave her the
name “Manee.” (Possibly,
an abbreviation of
the Moldovan name
“Manuella,” the female
version of the
Moldovan rendition of
“Emmanuel.”) Manee LAST
NAME UNKNOWN [“LNU”]
grew up in
one of the
shtetls of Moldova,
in which farming
was the major
occupation.
Wikipedia has a delightful piece on Russian shtetls dwelling mostly on the Jewish psychology of that place and time. It is a sin to not read it ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtetl
And here are some pictures reflecting the shtetl era ...
We
deduce from the
age of Chia
Mena’s oldest living child
in the 1910
Census, Jacob, who
was 29 in
1910, that sometime
in the late
1870s, she met William LESCOVITCH,
who managed to
talk Manee LNU into marrying
him. The children
of the couple
to survive to
adulthood and emigrate
to America were
as follows …
Jacob LESCOVITCH,
born 1881.
Dora LESCOVITCH,
born 1884.
Rose LESCOVITCH,
Rise`’s grandmother, born
1886.
Yetta LESCOVITCH,
born 1888.
Samuel LESCOVITCH,
born 1890.
From this
we see that
Chia Mena LESCOVITCH
was a “barefoot-and-pregnant” Jewish
mother, typical for
the age.
The 1910
Census makes it
clear that the
LESCOVITCH household in
Moldova was a
Yiddish-speaking household.
Wikipedia reports
the following about
Moldova and Moldova’s
Jews during the
time of the 19th century
czars, up to
and including the
reign of Czar
Nicholas II …
Over the 19th
century, the Russian authorities encouraged colonization of the south of the region by Romanians,[24] Ukrainians, Lipovans, Cossacks, Bulgarians,[25] Germans,[26] Gagauzes, and allowed the settlement of more Jews,[b] to replace the large Nogai Tatar population expelled in the 1770s and 1780s, during Russo-Turkish Wars;[28] the Moldovan proportion of the population decreased from an
estimated 86% in 1816,[29] in the aftermath of the Muslim expulsion, to around 52% in
1905.[30] During this time there were anti-Semitic riots, leading to an
exodus of thousands of Jews to the United States.[31]
Those anti-Semitic riots, or pogroms, frequently sponsored by governmental authorities, and always tolerated by them, became the overwhelming negative force in the lives of Jews in the shtetls in the Russian Pale of Settlement.
Sometime after
the conception of
Samuel LESCOVITCH in
1889 or 1890,
Wilhelm LESCOVITCH died -- in a pogrom? Consistent with Wikipedia’s
description of anti-Semitism
and pogroms in
the region, the
LESCOVITCH family began
to make its
way to the
United States. The
oldest son to
survive to manhood
and come to
America, Jacob LESCOVITCH,
appears to have
been the first
to emigrate to
our country, in
1903. He, Jacob
LESCOVITCH, Chia Mena’s
son, is the
real “family patriarch”
to lead the
family to safety
in America. Chia Mena, among the last to come over, was just the "beloved momma." The
1910 Census indicates
that Jacob earned
his keep in
America as a
self-employed Philadelphia “fruit
huckster,” while he
learned the language.
A colorized photo of early 20th century hucksters
The timing of
the entrance of
the rest of
the family into
the United States
suggests that Jacob
“wrote when he
found work,” remitting
money back to
the family for
the next kid
to emigrate.
Yetta came
over in 1905.
She probably moved-in
with Jacob in
Philadelphia, and earned
her keep in
America as a
machine “operator” in
“ladies’ waists,” apparently
a reference to
“waistcoat-making” in a
Philadelphia waistcoat manufacturing
concern.
Yetta was
followed by Rise`’s
grandmother Rose in
1906. Probably, both
Jacob and Yetta
financed her transport
from the Pale
of Settlement in
that year. Rose
probably also moved-in
with Jacob and
with Yetta upon arrival in
Philadelphia, and like
Yetta she earned
her keep in
America as a
machine “operator” in the production
of “ladies’ waists.”
Samuel was
next, in 1907.
Undoubtedly the process
was the same --
he moved-in with
Jacob, Yetta, and
Rose in Philadelphia,
and earned his
keep in America
as a cloth
“cutter” in the
manufacture of “cloaks.”
1909 was
the year of
the final emigration
of the rest
of the family.
Undoubtedly, all 4
kids, Jacob, Yetta,
Rose and Samuel,
pulled together their
financial resources to
rent a place
for the extended
family to live
in Philadelphia, and
pay for the rest
of the family’s
transit from Moldova
to Philadelphia. They
rented 1724 South
6th Street, a
corner store with
second and third
story living quarters,
at the corner
of 6th and
Pierce at what
was then the
Jewish section of
the Wharton neighborhood
in South Philadelphia.
1724 S. 6th Street as it appears today,
courtesy of Google Blogger's owner's
Google Map system
Then, they
sent the money
which the rest
of the family
needed for travel
to America from Moldova.
Around 1904
or 1905, Chia
Mena’s daughter Dora,
still living with
her mother in
Moldova, had met and
-- shades of
Chava and Fyedka!
-- married a
man with the
interesting Anglo-sounding surname
“Cooperstock,” and bore
him two children,
a boy and
a girl, to
whom they gave
interesting Anglo-sounding given
names Wolf, 2
in 1909, and
Tony (short for
“Tanya”?), 1 in
1909.
So, when
they came to
America from Moldova
in 1909, “Chia”
Manee LESCOVITCH was
accompanied by her
daughter Dora, who
was apparently already
widowed, at 25
years of age,
Dora’s toddler son
Wolf and infant
daughter Tony, and
possibly a 40
year old family
friend, a married
man without his wife named
Ike Winoff, who
lived with the
LESNAR family as
a boarder.
At some
point in Russia
but more probably
in America --
perhaps as Jacob
LESCOVITCH was being
processed-in on Ellis
Island years before in 1903 -- the
family shortened LESCOVITCH
to what to
them may have
seemed like a
more American-sounding name,
LESNAR. Everyone in the family
-- and they
were all living
at 1724 S. 6th Street
in 1910 --
called themselves LESNAR
to the Census-taker
when he came
to the house
in 1910.
On arrival in Philadelphia in 1909, Dora LESNAR
set-up a grocery
store on the
ground floor of
1724 S. 6th Street
to support herself
and her children and her mother, undoubtedly
with the balance
of the funds
pulled together by
her brothers and
sisters.
A fascinating
Canadian record reveals
that on January
24, 1917, 32
year old Dora
Cooperstock married Louis
Waldman in Winnipeg,
Manitoba, Canada. That
is almost certainly
our Dora -- how many Dora Cooperstocks could there have been in North America in that period? So,
74 year old
Chia Mena would
have continued living
above the store
with whichever of
her children was
still running it.
The outbreak of the more
deadly strain of
the great Spanish flu pandemic began sweeping through the Russian
immigrant neighborhoods in
Philadelphia in October, 1918. Records show
that it hit
hardest of all in the
third week of
October, 1918 --
that is, from
October 15 to
October 21.
On October
21, 1918, 75
year old Manee
“Chia Mena” LESNAR
succumbed, probably to
that great Spanish
flu pandemic of
1918. The LESNAR
family buried her
in Har Jehuda
Cemetery, on Darby Road / Lansdowne Avenue
in Upper Darby,
Pennsylvania, as stated
above. The history
of Har Jehuda
set forth in
the Find-a-Grave website
makes clear the
reason why the
LESNAR’s chose Har
Jehuda as Chia
Mena’s final resting
place …
Har Jehuda (also spelled Har Yehuda),
located on 27 acres, was founded by Julius Moskowitz, a Russian-Jew, who was
president of the Independent Chevra Kadisha in South Philadelphia . It was the
first Jewish cemetery west of Philadelphia. Moskowitz, a Russian-Jew, decided
to establish in the mid-1890s a Jewish burial ground for Eastern European Jews
without regard to their country of origin. It was accessible by inter-urban
trolley car that connected Upper Darby and West Chester to Philadelphia. It was
the first non-profit cemetery established for the concentrated population of
Eastern European Jews in South Philadelphia.
The use
of a footstone
rather than a
tombstone hints that
the family’s income
was “middle class – level” at
the time.
In another
one of those
startling coincidences involving
myself and Rise`’s
extended family before
I ever met
Rise`, I think
that I and
the girl I
was dating during
my college years
drove past Har
Jehuda about 1,000
times in the
1970s.
